Friday, September 04, 2015

A Few Thoughts On the Deflategate Verdict

No. Just no.

Roger Goodell will almost certainly be fired. He had one job - keep things good for the owners - and he failed. He alienated his biggest supporter, embarassed the league, and hurt the brand. Someone more pliable and less addicted to the limelight will be filling his chair shortly.

Patriots fans need to understand that the rest of the country was rooting for the suspension to be upheld, not because of any beliefs in Brady's guilt or innocence, but because we enjoyed watching you lose your collective minds over it. "Free at Last" t-shirts? Really? You're going to try to pull that equivalence?

There is almost certainly no truth to the rumor that the entire exercise was just a ploy to pump up Jimmy Garoppalo's trade value so the Pats can swap him like they did with Matt Cassel and Ryan Mallett and God damnit, I need a drink.

The fact that this thing dragged on for nine months is the second greatest mystery of of the modern NFL, behind "why haven't the other owners sent men in ski masks to Daniel Snyder's house to explain to him why he should really sell the team right now."

Let us remind ourselves once again that of the sins of the two starterbacks in the upcoming Pats-Steelers game, Brady's are pretty minor.

Goodell has stated he will not be attending the season opener, the aforementioned Pats-Steelers game, which will be held in Foxboro. (Note: I have been to Foxboro once. Spent a couple of weeks there one morning listening to the women in the next booth at the IHOP discuss why one of their kids didn't wear enough pants for his day at school. I do not intend to return to Foxboro any time soon.) This is probably a wise decision, as I'm sure his appearance would have been greeted with all the restraint and decorum that Boston sports fans are known for.1

DeflateGate is still a stupid name.

This isn't over. There will be the inevitable appeal, which the NFL will lose, unless the owners flat out stand on Goodell's neck and tell him to deactivate the automatic lawyer reflex response. I give that about a 50% chance.

It is a sign of the hold that football has on the American imagination that something as flat-out asinine as this can command national attention during the heat of the pennant race. Congratulations, football, you keep on coming up with stuff that's so mind-bogglingly stupid and over the top that it has to be commented on, no matter what. So the hell wtih you. I'm going to go see if I can listen to Vin Scully for a while.

1This is when the inevitable "but Philly sports fans threw snowballs at Santa Claus, hurr hurr hurr" comes out. I would point out 1)the late Frank Olivo had those snowballs tossed at him in 1968, aka "roughly seven years before Big Papi was born". and 2)I've never seen a blow-up sex doll batted around the outfield bleachers in Philly, even in the bad old days of the Vet.